Tag Archives: migration

The DACA Picnic

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Posted by on in Assistance, collaborating, Community, distraction issues, impediments, Inner Struggles, Inspiration, Personal Values, Service Activities, Social, Striving

August 27, 2023- Close to fifty people were gathered in Granite Creek Park, early this afternoon, when I went over for an event organized to assist people registering with the government, under the terms of the Dream Act, for another two years of relative safety, as legal residents of the United States.

It was a well-organized, if low key, event-with a few people playing games and practicing Tae Kwon Do, despite the heat. Most of the Boomers in attendance were gathered under the ramada. I got my food and went to sit and watch the kids of various ages, who were engaged in the fun activities. The samosa vendor from Farmers Market was providing her delicious East African filled dumplings, as the protein item in the light lunch that was given to each of us. I took one of the chicken samosas, some Veggie Straws, a navel orange and some sparkling water.,

This brings me to the whole immigration issue. I read a post, this evening, by someone I thought knew better, saying that all the changes taking place in the world right now are organized by some shadowy group that wants to buy up as much land as they can get away with (thus, the wildfires in Hawaii, Canada and around the Mediterranean region), lock everyone down again (thus, the recent outbreaks of ad nauseam subvariants of Covid) and crash the U.S. economy (thus, the BRICS Group’s expansion). Similar fears are being expressed about migration, a phenomenon that far predates our system of nations and borders, and which will far outlast its present iteration- and for one reason: People will go where the work is.

I am personally in favour of a Guest Worker program, which would allow people to enter this country legally, for the purpose of filling those positions which American citizens choose not to occupy. While they ought to be able to drive, again as licensed operators, subject to all laws, including the holding of an adequate insurance policy, and should be able to find housing, their children be educated in U.S schools, etc., I do not favour granting other perquisites, such as welfare or unemployment insurance payments-especially as there are many American citizens who go without such benefits. Homeless citizens should be first in line for affordable housing, which is a human right. Citizens who are ill should be first in line for affordable health care-also a human right. We have the wherewithal to do right by our fellow Americans AND, in an organized manner, help our fellow humans who come to us from other nations.

Jumping back to the BRICS question, the very organization of that group is a direct nconsequence of colonialism. Every member of BRICS, except Russia, is a country which was once administered, and/or had its resources extrmeriacted by, one or more nations of Western Europe. It is NOT a cabal that wants to destroy the United States. If anything, the nations want to copy the better aspects of the American model, and why wouldn’t they? Seeking to level the playing field requires a gradual spread of genuine democratic practices-and even China is going to find that to be to its benefit, if it hasn’t realized that already.

BRICS ties in with DACA, in that the only way to prevent the monstrous cabal, that so many fear, from taking over, is to empower the Global South, and its citizens, in place-so that there is not an accelerating and unwieldy wave upon wave of people overloading the nations of North America and Europe, far beyond anything we are experiencing now. Both development in place, and a well-managed Guest Worker program in the developed nations, are needed, and urgently.

Contraction and Expansion

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Posted by on in Assistance, collaborating, Community, Historical, impediments, Inner Struggles, Inspiration, Personal Values, Social, Striving

June 22, 2021, Lake Havasu City- In the Spring of 2000, a group of senior citizens, residents of a small enclave on the south side of Salome, AZ, converged on a meeting of the La Paz County Board of Supervisors. They wanted to see an ordinance enacted, which would curb the behaviour of the town’s younger residents. Among these seniors was a former resident of San Francisco, whose complaint was with young people who were raising livestock, within town limits. He began, and ended, with “Back in San Francisco, this would never be allowed!” The chair of the Board of Supervisors, in rural La Paz County, cut the man off, merely thanking him for his perspective. The seniors with more universal concerns, about partying and noise, got a fuller hearing.

I am in this city of retirees and service providers to visit for a bit with some friends who have felt isolated for quite some time-and not just because of COVID19. Lake Havasu is at least an hour, in any direction, from any city of comparable, or larger, size: Bullhead City lies an hour to the north; Kingman, the same, to the northeast; Various California retirement havens are an hour away, to the west, and Parker, the seat of La Paz County, is about an hour to the south.

Into the isolation of the Colorado River Valley, in western Arizona, are coming sizable numbers of those leaving California. As is the case elsewhere, people with cash in hand are buying up houses, and vacant lots, “by the boatload”, as it were. Snap-up culture, a peculiarly American phenomenon, sparked initially by fear and loathing of one’s lot-and sustained, later on, by arrogance and greed, is generating a sizable migration out of the Golden State (as well as New York and Chicago)-sometimes pulling the rug out from under people of more modest means, who have come within an inch of securing a home. When this happens here in the U.S., it fosters some grumbling and temporary ill will towards the migrants. When it happens in other countries, the migrants, or second-home purchasers may face reactions from locals that are far less genteel.

I see this from two sides: Mankind has always been on the move. Large populations initially moved north, east and probably west from Africa, very early on. Millennia later, there began several large migrations, in all directions, from the Altai, the Gobi and the steppes of what is now, Kazakhstan, sending Avars, Huns, Mongols, Turks to Europe and southwest Asia; many of who are now known as Indigenous Americans headed, out of the same region, to North America, and thence to its southern neighbour. Northwestward, to the European Arctic region, went those now known as the Sami-formerly the Lapps. What US President James Knox Polk called “Manifest Destiny” has been in our genetic memory for a good long time.

On the other hand, with few exceptions since the original peopling of this planet, there have always been “locals” there to either greet the newcomers, or to resist them. Which is which depends largely on the need, or lack thereof, for new blood to revitalize a community AND on the attitudes of the newcomers. People who charge into a new setting, buy up the property, propagate the worst of what they claim to have left behind, and push the locals around, should not be surprised at the glares and sidelong glances they get from their new neighbours, as these mutter among themselves. Those who, on the other hand, settle gently into their adopted community, with a humble posture of learning, will over time be adopted as bona fide residents. There are plenty of both sorts, among the current groups of migrants, as there have been in such groups, throughout history.

I wish the better angels of their natures to be in the vanguard.

A Few More Random Thoughts

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Posted by on in Assistance, collaborating, Community, distraction issues, Historical, impediments, Inner Struggles, Inspiration, Personal Values, Social, Striving

February 24, 2021- Today was a day for accompanying a friend around Lynx Lake, which both of us found enjoyable. The lake’s water table is down, as we might expect-given our long dry spell of last year, but the water birds are already coming back- noisy ducks and showy cormorants.

I picked up two of Isabel Wilkerson’s books: “The Warmth of Other Suns”, about the African-American migration out of the South, starting in the 1930s and “Caste”, about the role of that system in the stratifcation of American society-and the true connection between that stratification and Nazism. These ought to be very insightful. I don’t see an immediate tie between “Trumpsim”, which is largely personality-based and Fascism, which has systemic goals-but there are people who subscribe to both-just as there are doctrinaire people, who also are personality-driven, on the other end of the political spectrum.

I have meditated on the mercurial nature of several people in my circle, at present. Having gotten past feeling a personal affront, when those who have been uniformly pleasant over the past several months, suddenly turn icy, I can sense that the sameness of the pandemic-driven regimen is getting to too many people, just a tad too soon. I can also sense that we are getting a handle on the disease- the “variants” aside.

Finally, just an observation: Those who act out of fear are less the problem than those who stoke that fear-and privately mimic their followers. Yes, there are people egging the masses on, who take Lenin’s view of “useful idiots.” They are the true problematics.